FromSoftware’s long-awaited Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods is entering its first closed beta network test soon and ahead of that the characters and classes have leaked. The classes have been given excellent sounding names and there’s a wide variety of them to choose from. While details of the all-important gameplay remain under wraps, we won’t have long till we get some impressions.
1. Blood-Eater | Walter The sole survivor of an extinct clan of rare-blood hunters. He uses his extraordinary sense of smell to track the blind spots in others’ pasts. He descended into madness after repeatedly licking the blood spatter from his sister—whom he himself had killed—and still walks the line between life and death in search of pure blood.
2. Guillotine | Gillian An executioner of the Marisbel Inquisition. He carries a massive iron guillotine blade on his back. Having been exposed to too much blood over the years, he has begun to mutate himself, and now wanders in search of the “Blood of the Beginning” before his own head is severed.
3. Foul-Rot | Veronica A blind nun abandoned in the basement of a ruined cathedral. She inflicts self-harm to spread the grotesque blood blisters multiplying inside her body. The footprints she leaves behind instantly cause anything they touch to rot.
4. Nail-Pierced | Sebastian A fanatic saint who drives silver nails into various parts of his body, using the flowing blood as a catalyst for miracles. By inflicting wounds on himself, he temporarily gains overwhelming ferocity, but his mind and body are already completely broken.
5. Coffin-Bearer | Maurice A man who continued to collect corpses on the streets of Temurat at dusk. A mud-like monstrosity that was once his family writhes inside the iron coffin he carries on his back; by slamming the coffin against enemies, he sucks up their blood and feeds it to the creature inside.
6. Thread-Torn | Oscar A deranged taxidermist who sews the flesh of beasts from all eras and regions directly onto his own body. During battle, he seizes enemy tissue and uses it to eerily patch and reinforce himself. Through the accumulation of tainted power, he transforms his own body into that of an ancient, rare beast.
7. Mud-Treader | Ulan A female warrior who gained superhuman leg strength through human experimentation. Filthy blood constantly gushes from her ankles, and a red, poisonous swamp forms wherever she runs.
8. Candle-Snuffer | Isabel A former waitress at the Siltera Noble Mansion. She possesses the ability to materialize shadows and trap her enemies’ blood within them to drain it. All light vanishes from the places she passes through.
9. Gut-Rinner | Randolph An assault trooper of the Sampere Weapons Corps. Equipped with a back-mounted mechanism that allows him to fly freely and a massive piercing spear, he rips through his opponents’ flesh and blood along with their armor. His abdomen is heavily mechanized, enabling him to unleash devastating, wide-area attacks using bloodlust as a catalyst.
10. Gazer-of-Flesh | Yuri A heretical observer who cut off his own eyelids. He possesses the ability to intensify a target’s blood flow simply by fixing his gaze on them, causing their body to explode from within.
11. Ash-Crown | Camilla A girl whose clan was burned to the ground. She wields “blood ash”—a mixture of the victims’ ashes and her own blood—to petrify and crystallize her enemies before shattering them.
12. Rust-Gospel | Baldur A former priest of Kinmitsu who has stuffed his mouth with large amounts of scrap iron and needles. Every time he utters a prayer, his mouth is torn apart, and the mist of blood he spits out becomes a powerful attack.
13. Dusk-Silt | Elsa A woman whose Dusk Disease has progressed to its final stage. When attacked, her body transforms into a blood-mud-like substance, allowing her to evade attacks and flow freely, then inject her own poisonous blood directly into her opponent’s body.
14. First-Shard | Nameless Shadow An imperfect mass of flesh known as “First Blood,” incapable of understanding language and lacking any sense of its own origins. A cursed being that eerily mimics and unleashes the techniques of every bloodline.